One Paseo opponents succeeded in gathering enough signatures to send this development back to the starting line. The San Diego City Council will now have two choices: they can rescind their approval or they can submit the question to all of the voters in the city on the June 2016 ballot. Some recent polling suggests that the project is seen unfavorably by a wide margin in the city of San Diego. If the Council rescinds its approval, the developer will have to go back to the drawing board.

The petition signatures, well over 60,000, were found to be valid. The developer’s effort to gather enough signatures to remove names from the petition failed by a wide margin--only a few thousand were found to be actual signers of the opposition petition.

In the meantime
In the meantime two lawsuits have been filed against the City of San Diego claiming the Environmental Impact Report they accepted in order to approve the Project is flawed. Mitigate One Paseo (North Coastal area), Alliance for Responsible Development (the former What Price Main Street) and the East Bluff (just northeast of I-5 at Del Mar Heights Road) Community Association got together to file the first. The second was filed by Donahue Schriber, owner of Del Mar Highlands.

On April 1 the Ocean Beach Community Planning Group became the latest of the City’s advisory planning boards to weigh in against the One Paseo approval and the costs involved. “The board hereby expresses its concern that the …approval of One Paseo threatens the integrity of the City of San Diego’s entire community planning process, its community plans and its community planning boards.” In a separate letter to their Council Member Lorie Zapf, the Board wrote: “This is clearly a case of big money. The developer…has a huge amount invested (and) the opposition is funded by a nearby shopping center. What would happen if this kind of developer came to OB and had purchased the properties to build a new Newport Avenue? Could we only complain and watch? How much money does it take to protect a community?”